Why are so many people involved in open source? Well, for all of the business reasons covered before. I also think it’s joyful to get to work with people of a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Additionally, open source has given me a sense of permanence to my career, where the job I’ve taken from year to year has not.

There are a couple of different ways you can participate in open source.

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Contributing is a form of short-term participation. You make a one-off or twice-off contribution, and then your involvement is over.

Maintaining is taking long-term ownership over a particular aspect of a project. In this equation I’ve produced, maintaining is greater than contributing both in level of reward, but also effort, commitment, and emotional involvement.

Let’s take a walk through the emotional journey of becoming a maintainer.

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We’re all aware that open source is an increasingly valuable part of the global economy. In this talk, I hope I’ve conveyed that, emotional rollercoaster aside, maintaining an open source project can be a hugely rewarding part of your career.

I am Brandon Keepers, and I work at GitHub on making Open Source more approachable, effective, and ubiquitous. I tend to think like an engineer, work like an artist, dream like an astronaut, love like a human, and sleep like a baby.